Hotka, Thomas & Petersen, Trey – Nextuus: The Hunt for the Raamas Emerald

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Nextuus: The Hunt for the Raamus Emerald

I’m a sucker for a big, immersive science fiction world, as is probably pretty well established around this website by now. Even when they don’t grab me completely right out of the gate, I give people a lot of credit for spending the time to build up a believable world (within the confines of the rules for that particular brand of science fiction as established by the creator). Anyway, I picked up this comic at SPACE 2013 (which means I’m really slow reviewing it, so oops), along with a free primer for the series to catch up people who haven’t been following along, and that ended up impressing me even more than the comic. Why? Because most of the people in the primer aren’t even in this comic, because the comic is a prequel, meaning that there’s already a complete past and future world to work with, and a 180 page graphic novel floating around. If this is your kind of thing too, you’re in luck. As for the comic itself, the title explains what the point is pretty well, but this is the old crew trying to track down this emerald for a museum that had had much of its stock destroyed during a recent war. It’s basically an excuse to get to know the crew better, as they spend a lot of time trudging through the jungle and chatting before running into some armed bad guys who also want the emerald. Just to make it clear, in my view spending a few issues establishing the characters is essential to the long term success of a book. Who cares about a story with cardboard cutouts for characters? That is all done well here but (and I mean this in the best possible way) this comic felt like a drop in the bucket to what they have planned. A self-contained drop in the bucket, so don’t be afraid to pick it up because you don’t want to be lost in the story. Even without the primer they include some character bios in the intro, so no danger there. The art is occasionally a little hard to follow (like that scene aboard the dark plane, but that’s maybe just because they were aboard a dark plane and they couldn’t see that well either), but overall it’s solid. Check it out, and they have plenty of samples/stories at their website if you still need convincing. $2